The Danger Down the Road

The current controversy over NSA oversight of, well, everything, seems a bit shortsighted. What worries me is not that the government is monitoring everything everyone is writing or saying electronically (still technologically impossible, given available resources) or that they are filtering everything looking for keywords or “patterns” (which they ARE doing), but rather that in the future, when every an individual or organization, say, animal rights activists or labor organizers or tax protesters, falls under government scrutiny, the NSA will have access to everything they have ever said or done on-line or over the cell networks. Talk about your Chilling Effect.